I don't know that this would be considered a colossal choke job.
The Sox haven't really had a stranglehold on first. Did the lead ever exceed 5 games?
This team played above its prediction all year, helped by a very mediocre division.
This was never a world beater roster. It just played well enough to lead a bad division while Detroit found itself.
This thing isn't over, and the Sox may very well play good baseball and snatch this division. To say that they choked is false. They just stopped playing better than they actually were.

How is this not a colossal choke job? After beating the Tigers, all they had to do is go .500 and they would be fine. They're 1-7 since then.

I was at the game. The crowd pretty much knew it was over when the Indians first tied it at 3. people were there to get drunk - not rowdy and loud drunk, more like drowning sorrows drunk - and think about what could have been. The crowd wasn't loud because there wasn't a ton to be loud about, but I moved all around the lower deck and came across lots of people with good insights into everything that the team was doing wrong.

I've got tickets to the next three games, sounds like my kind of party.

__________________It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. - A. Bartlett Giamatti

Holy Cow, we walked 12 guys tonight. 12 guys in a bad lineup. This is just being too scared to play good baseball. 12 walks is pathetic, spineless pitching.

Those walks were like getting your fingernails pulled out one at a time. Pitch to these ****in guys. If you start *****footing around with the guys that the Indians are throwing out there, what's gonna happen if they make the playoffs? I don't think we can carry 27 pitchers (one for each batter). Just play your game boys, and hopefully the Tigers road suckiness will help us out at the end here.

If you can keep your head when all about you. Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for, etc.

Keep your heads boys.

to your statement in bold and to one of my all-time favorite poems which certainly seems to fit the urgency of the hour. My brain interprets the situation and confirms that the Sox are in trouble while my heart screams: ‘Hold on!

If—BY RUDYARD KIPLING

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

__________________2014 - My compatriots: Adrian, Alexei, Jose, and Dayan; thanks for the pic, ChiSoxGal85!!!!October26 - Thank you to the 2005 World Series Champions Chicago White Sox!October26 - Twenty-SEVEN years ago, I married my husband on October 26. Since that day, we have been blessed with a wonderful family. Then, on October 26, 2005, when the baseball gods bestowed their good fortunes upon us, we saw the White Sox win the World Series. An incredibly talented team of grinders made every Sox fan's dream come true. My family and I celebrated with reckless abandon. And now, we look forward to that day when our White Sox will once again be World Series Champions!

I know it's fashionable for fans to now say that they saw this coming and that this team was never more than, at best, a tad above average blah , blah blah. But, this slide surprises me. The team has been resilient and played smart, good baseball all year long -- until September.

If I had to vote on whether this was either a choke or running out of gas, I'd choose the latter (if it matters).

I'm hoping the team has one more 7 game spurt left in them. It would be really disappointing to end what had been a fun season on such a sour note. As between the Sox and Detroit, I'm not sure we are the better team. But the better team frequently doesn't win. Let's hang in there for one more week.

It continues to baffle me the use of September call ups in high pressure situations. If you go with Santiago tonight, your back up plan can't be Omio****ingrosso after pitching 2.1 innings last night.

The Omogrosso use last night was puzzling after throwing the night before. The Quintana use the other night was too coming just a couple days after starting. I'm not sure I understand a lot of the bullpen usage lately, but when the starters are consistently unable to go deep into games, it wears out the bullpen too.

For the most part, the bullpen has pitched a lot better than the rotation lately, not that it's really helped; the general trend lately seems to be that the starters pitch mediocre and don't make it much past 5 innings (if even that far), and then the bullpen keeps it just close enough for the Sox to not lose by a lot. It makes for really depressing baseball to watch.

Detroit's in a much different position. They have enough good deep performances by their starters (Verlander's 8 innings the other night, Sanchez' complete game, Fister's complete game last week, etc.) that when the shakier parts of their rotation struggle, like Porcello last night or Smily a few days ago, they can go through normal guys instead of a bunch of rookies, because the normal guys are rested. Plus it helps that they just got Albuquerque off the DL for the first time all year, and he hasn't given up a run yet in 11.2 innings.

I know it's fashionable for fans to now say that they saw this coming and that this team was never more than, at best, a tad above average blah , blah blah. But, this slide surprises me. The team has been resilient and played smart, good baseball all year long -- until September.

If I had to vote on whether this was either a choke or running out of gas, I'd choose the latter (if it matters).

I'm hoping the team has one more 7 game spurt left in them. It would be really disappointing to end what had been a fun season on such a sour note. As between the Sox and Detroit, I'm not sure we are the better team. But the better team frequently doesn't win. Let's hang in there for one more week.

I think a lot of us expected it because of prior sox teams. This just seems to be a sox "thing" in September. The pessimists shouted it out loud, the in betweeners( me) stayed quiet and hoped for the best while having that constant pang o " it's happening again", and the optimists are still optimistic and will continue to be that way.

Unfortunately, there are a lot more pessimistic people on this board who have seen this story and know what to expect. So that " told you so" element always pops up too.

I don't know, entering September I hoped that I would see something different under Ventura. But I have not, it's actually exactly the same since I can remember. If this team can find a way to disappoint you, it will. The sox have an uncanny way of keeping you in it until the very last second, and then either dropping the hammer on you or giving you immeasurable joy. It's never easy with them, and the immeasurable joy is a rarity.

Might want to step off the ledge their, chap, as Dayan, De Aza, and Beckham are not FA after this season.

Source, chap? Everything I've looked up has their contract ending in 2012, so I'm gonna assume their arbitration eligible, but I can't find anything definitive.

In that case we're keeping guys that played exactly the way they were supposed to and got us 86ish wins.The I was making was the every did exactly what they were expected to do...and the team finished in the middle of the pack.

Dayan is a special case since he was given an MLB contract from the start, but seeing as he entered this season with only 0.123 years of MLB service, I don't see how he could possibly make up the several years of service time he'd need to be an FA at the end of the season.